Three Years, or Five
Once the biological response had been confirmed, the young lady's account proved true.
So the physician added.
Ludville's brow twitched, barely. He said nothing.
"To be precise, the condition had already surpassed what autoimmunity could contain. Repeated exposure to monster blood appears to have allowed miasma to accumulate in the internal organs."
"And?"
The physician glanced toward Odelli and went on.
"Had the young lady found Your Grace even a little later... you would not be sitting here face to face, able to hold a conversation at all."
Wait.
Something in those words refused to sit right. Ludville asked again.
"The young lady found me?"
So it had not been the knight order, come to save him. Now that he thought of it—
You will need me. You said so yourself.
A pale face seemed to rise in his memory, murmuring in a voice that shook from end to end. For a moment he looked startled. Then he turned to Odelli as if seeing her anew.
"How, exactly, did you manage it?"
"A purification ability."
This time it was Odelli who answered. The flush that had stained her ears had already faded back to its proper color, and her voice was perfectly calm. Ludville found himself, oddly, disappointed.
"I mentioned it briefly once before. It is an ability unique to me."
She spoke as if she were merely delivering information. Even so, Ludville could feel the faint intention tucked behind that even tone—the air of someone arguing her own necessity. A cool, calculated persuasion that she belonged at his side.
And yet...
If the young lady was telling the truth, it was a power that needed no persuasion from her at all. Anyone in the world would pour out a fortune to keep such a person, and even the emperor would not think it beneath him to seek her out in person, again and again. Talent that absurd. And if it was innate, there was nothing more to say.
She purified the miasma of a man driven to the very brink of pre-monsterification?
This was nothing like easing his headaches, or briefly thinning the drug in his blood. It belonged to an entirely different order—a miracle on the scale of taking water laced with lethal poison and making it fit to drink again. What she had done was no different from setting a stagnant, rotting river flowing once more.
What is this woman?
What kind of being was she? He had never seen anything like it.
...No. It was certainly not the first time.
The "ancient magic" wrought through Cardel's barrier produced exactly this effect. But it was not Cardel's way. Whenever they used ancient magic, it was always as elaborate and ostentatious as a rite. They arrived with mages in tow, covered the floor in intricate circles, shouted grand incantations, and made certain everyone watched the process. Under the banner of sacred ancient magic, they always gathered a crowd to pray and to stand in awe.
And the daughter of that house—the youngest, kept from every public appearance by a chronic illness—had used purification magic alone? Did that make any sense? With nothing but her bare hands. No mages beside her. No prayer, no incantation, no magical backlash...
This was not ancient magic.
Ludville felt it by instinct. The power she called a purification ability might well be the true method of purification that House Cardel had kept hidden.
Why has she stayed hidden all this time?
That was what he meant to ask. Why, at every official occasion, had only the eldest son, Gawin, ever stepped forward? He meant to—until she added, in a voice that brooked no argument:
"And above all, you have not been completely purified. You are so steeped in miasma that once or twice will never make it vanish. The lack of emotion delayed its onset, so even I only realized it now. The physician as well..."
Odelli had been speaking calmly when her eyes suddenly sharpened, as if the more she thought about it, the angrier she became.
"...What, exactly, does a person have to do to end up like this in a mere three months?"
"Young lady, are you angry with me?"
Ludville was dumbfounded, and yet a strange pleasure rose in him. The face that was always so calmly composed had, for an instant, come undone, as if showing him what lay beneath. Curious at the sharp lift of her eyes, he reached out like a child—and Odelli slapped the hand away.
"You have a bad habit with those hands."
"I was about to say the same. And earlier, you were the one who touched me first..."
"In any case."
Odelli cut him off cleanly and went on.
"You will need purification on an ongoing basis. If you keep overexerting yourself as you have, the miasma may activate again. And if, by ill luck, the conditions for monsterification happen to align at that moment..."
"I could become a monster."
"Yes."
"A monster... I've spent my whole life hunting them. I never thought I might become one."
People already went around calling him a monster. To turn into a real one—wouldn't that be amusing? Ludville let out a short laugh, his face showing not the slightest sense of danger.
She was certain of it. Certain the way a veteran was certain, an expert who had repeated that course of treatment more times than she could count.
I wondered what she'd been so sure of, to carry herself like that.
It had simply been confidence she was entitled to. She had the skill to match it. No—judging by the way she had understated her ability until now, never stating it plainly, she was, if anything, excessively modest. As if she were used to hiding.
Odelli Cardel.
The beloved youngest daughter of House Cardel. But if she were truly beloved, they would never have concealed a purification ability that far surpassed ancient magic. Power of this order would ordinarily have made her the heir. They would have set her at the forefront, displayed the gift, and raised the house's standing on it.
But they had hidden her. The reason, in all likelihood...
Lost in the thought, Ludville asked,
"You're saying treatment is possible?"
Odelli nodded. Before she could speak, the physician—visibly tense—hurried on, afraid the unhinged Ludville might start spouting some nonsense and drive this precious talent away.
"The notion of a 'purification ability' is new to me as well. But taken together, the soldiers' testimony suggests a rare power specialized in the removal of miasma."
The tone carried, undiluted, a physician's sense of duty and obsession: a talent like this must not be lost. Odelli agreed, and added,
"If purification is repeated steadily, at regular intervals, recovery should be possible within a few years. Three years... or, at the outside, five."
Ludville said nothing.
By coincidence, it aligned with the term of the contract Odelli had proposed. He stared at her, his expression oddly sour.